Probably the secret of all this crumbling up of courage lay in the nature of the man’s very self. Vanity may be a rare cement in the walls of a man’s fortune so long as there is no corroding acid in the air. And Stephen Gore’s genius had rested upon his vanity, not in his dress alone, but in all those attributes that a man desires to see given to his splendor. His vital force had been fed upon the pleasant things of life; he was a self-inflated, artificial creature, who was strong so long as he could be flattered. But, like an orthodox believer smitten to the heart with doubt, he began to find his convictions dissolving into chaos, and the adulations of self-worship becoming a mockery despite his efforts to believe them real. Voices—sharp, sneering, sardonic voices that he had had the strength to stifle of old—began to cut him with his own cleverness, using the very gibes against him that he had used in the gay salons to his own glory. For when a cynic falls into misfortune he is likely to discover that he has nurtured a devil that will use its claws upon the master who has reared it. Stephen Gore had often said that— “A man who begins to think his virtue shabby is a man who cannot afford to pay his tailor—the priest.” “Never confess to yourself any cause for shame, or you will soon find your feet in the mire.” “Men may regret; only women and fools repent.” “Consciousness is life; therefore a man ought to suffer himself to be conscious only of pleasant things.” And my Lord of Gore was having a wider consciousness forced upon him in the narrow world of that ruined house. And where were the studied pleasantries of consciousness? A fine gentleman feeding on salt beef and onions, scraping his own fire together, and living in devout horror of a prosaic thing called death. So much so that he was possessed by a species of “morsomania” grim enough to prevent him seeing the cynically comic side of his own condition. XLI A man in love is not supposed to think of his lady’s clothes, but only of the brightness of her eyes and the beauty of her body, the way her lips curve when she smiles, and how she may look coy or mischievous, or sad and silent with some mysterious desire. Yet there is a delight in practical things when shoes are for certain feet, and the petticoats to hide a certain comely pair of ankles. John Gore had inquired of Mrs. Winnie as to the shops in Battle Town, and qualified her enthusiasm somewhat to himself when she vowed that Mr. Bannister’s mercery and haberdashery shop might have served the Queen.